Prison Courtyard, by Vincent van Gogh, 1890. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia.

Prison Courtyard, by Vincent van Gogh, 1890. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia.

Crimes & Punishments

Volume II, Number 2 | spring 2009

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Soldiers and police establishing line at door of the Morgan Bank after anti-capitalist Wall Street bombing, September 16, 1920.

Preamble

Crime Scenes

By Lewis H. Lapham

The American fondness for the dressing up of crime in the costumes of romance is an amusement priced at too high a cost.

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Original death chamber at the Red Hat Cell Block, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 2010. Photograph by Lee Honeycutt.

Staking a Life

By Christopher Hitchens

Why is the United States so wedded to the infliction of the death penalty?

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Map

Spider Men

The world’s most-wanted criminals.

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1651 | Paris

Order of Mischief

A philosophical hierarchy of crimes. More

c. 1650 | Boston

Withholding Redemption

Sinners in the hands of Nathaniel Hawthorne. More

1597 | London

Enemy of the State

Drawing a confession. More

Charts & Graphs

Medieval Torture

Horrible punishments from the Dark Ages.

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Black-and-white photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. with his right hand lifted

Russian author Yevgenia Semyonova Ginzburg.

Black and white photograph of French novelist, essayist, and playwright Albert Camus.

Black and white photograph of Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

color oil painting of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a red tunic with gray hair

After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.

—John Huston, 1950

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

American lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Friedrich Nietzsche & Clarence Darrow

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